The U.S. Dollar rallied broadly following stronger than expected economic data from the U.S. which bolstered investors’ expectations of the Federal Reserve’s pull back of some of its stimulus measures over the course of the next several months. U.S. equity markets also rallied as a result, and helped propel yields on 10-year U.S. treasury instruments to a more than 1-year high which served to lift U.S. Dollar based investments. Chief among the economic data which lifted the greenback was May’s consumer confidence index which surged to a reading of 76.2 from 69.0, well above analysts’ expectations of a slight rise to 71.0.
As reported at 11:42 a.m. (JST) in Tokyo, the USD/JPY pair traded at an intra-session peak of 102.50 Yen, before giving back some gains and trading at 102.27 Yen, still a 1.3% rise. Investors have expectations that last week’s 4½ year peak of 103.73 Yen might be struck again soon on expectations that the Federal Reserve Bank will take a diametrically polar position to that of the Bank of Japan. The EUR/USD pair was recently trading flat at 1.2854, moving a few pips away from a session high of 1.2863. The greenback also firmed against the Swiss Franc, with the USD/CHF pair trading at earlier 0.9755 Francs, a gain of 1.3%.